Dyce Kimura Miami Guitar Teacher

Miami Guitar Lessons by Dyce Kimura here! I am a guitar teacher, giving guitar lessons in Miami and also on Skype. I’m doing this video blog today just to talk about some common questions that I get asked every day on the phone from prospective students that want to come in and get guitar lessons. So I thought I’d just do a video to just address some common questions in case any of these pertain to you. So I typed up a few of these common questions. I’m going to read off one of them. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Here’s the first one; do I have to have my own guitar? Well, to take lessons, I guess you don’t have to have your own guitar you’re welcome to borrow one of mine; but I think it should be obvious to you that if you’re going to actually play the guitar and practice you’re going to want to buy your own guitar or borrow a guitar or have someone give you a guitar if you intend to get good at it because obviously you don’t want to just play the guitar at your teachers studio you want to be able to play the guitar at your home, in front of your friends, with your band, with your loved ones, in your quiet time. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons. So do I have to have my own guitar? No, you don’t have to have your own guitar. Do I suggest you have a guitar to play at home? Yes I do, because then you can practice it and you can develop your own ideas and then when you work with your teacher you just check in with your teacher as opposed to every time you interact with your teacher it’s like you haven’t touched your guitar since the last lesson. So hopefully that makes sense.

Next question; which is better, acoustic or electric guitar? Often people will say which is better, the normal guitar or the electric guitar? And usually when people say the normal guitar they mean the acoustic guitar. I just want to point out that the electric guitar is not an abnormal guitar, so it’s not like there is normal and abnormal like acoustic and electric. And also some people say that the acoustic guitar is the wooden guitar; I also want to point out that both the electric and the acoustic are all made of wood. So they are both wooden guitars and they are both normal. So getting down to this question which is better, the acoustic or electric guitar? Neither is better; they are both amazing. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Which is better for a beginner? I would say for most beginners the easier one to start on is the electric guitar. And by the way, that’s kind of our culture; a lot of people think that the acoustic is better or easier to start on. I am going to disagree with that conventional theme that a lot of non-guitars or even parents have. And the reason why is simply because it’s easier; the electric guitar has a thinner neck, it’s easier to wrap your hands around, the strings are lighter and it’s easier to play. A lot of people have no idea how hard it is to actually play the guitar in terms of pushing the chords with the left hand. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. They don’t realize until they are all up in their first lesson they are like, “oh my goodness this thing is really challenging.” And anything and everything that you can do to make it easier on yourself I think you should do. I mean, let’s face it, learning how to play music is hard enough but to have a physical challenge of having a cumbersome guitar that is not making the sounds quickly and easily and pleasantly, that in itself is a huge challenge as well. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

So I’ve been able to witness a lot of people benefit tremendously by just starting on electric, it’s a slimmer neck — I know I’m holding acoustic right now ironically, but I’m talking about electric, it’s a slimmer neck and it’s easier. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. I will give you a good analogy for any of you baby boomers out there if you’ve ever typed on an old fashion typewriter (not the electronic ones) but the actually old-fashioned and you have to actually dig the key in and push the key in to make the key punch the paper and the ink stamps the paper and that’s how you type; it’s very loud and forceful and cumbersome — that’s like playing an acoustic guitar. And the cool thing is when you just plug it in, when you add electricity you can type so much easier; as a matter of fact, I’m typing with my Mac and then I have a Bluetooth Apple keyboard and my fingers just fly on the keys, it’s just amazing and it’s even auto corrects — that’s great. Imagine that analogy is 100% true but with guitar. So there is kind of an old conventional thinking — even a backwards thinking that if you plug it in it’s harder, but that’s not true you can plug in a vacuum cleaner, you can plug in a guitar, you can plug in a coffee maker; they are all kinds of appliances nowadays that if you plug it in it’s so much easier. So take advantage of that, the electric is a lot easier. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Miami Guitar Lessons from Dyce Kimura

By the way, I do want to take this opportunity to tell you if you’re not sure about getting electric or acoustic you can come see me and you can try both and just try it before you go buy it and/or you could go buy it at your local store or on Amazon and most of these places has a 30 day money back guarantee. So you could get the guitar — even get is on a credit card so you’re actually not really paying anything and just try it and if you don’t like it return it for a full refund or with Amazon you might have to pay for shipping, but other than that you could try it to make an informed decision. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. If you like it, you can keep it; if you don’t like it, switch to the other one. So that’s a no risk way of trying and electric guitar. You’re going to obviously have to get an amp. And feel free to look on my YouTube channel. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. I have other videos on my YouTube channel for a Fender Squire review that I recommend and also for a good acoustic that I recommend called Apple phone PR 150 and also the PV Viper amp which is a great electric guitar amp. So I’ve done very in depth reviews of these beginner guitar appliances and equipment that you’re going to find a very beneficial so check it out. So again, which is better for a good beginner, acoustic or electric? I suggest the electric guitar. Again, there is no abnormal guitar all guitars are normal and all guitars are wooden with few exceptions. There are a few exceptions where you have guitars made of steel or brass or plastic, but most guitars are wooden. Also for kids, if you’re a child and your hand is small or as a woman if your hand is small than a full-grown man you’re really going to appreciate the electric guitar because again, it takes less strength to play and the bigger your hand the more torque you have in the ability to actually leverage and push on the strings, so it’s going to be harder for a child or someone with smaller hands like a woman to play a full-size acoustic guitar. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

What are the advantages of acoustic guitar? Well, there is portability and there is simplicity. However, because you don’t have the advantage of electricity working in your favor you have to do all the work just like the old typewriter. The old typewriter is portable, but it’s cumbersome. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. I just want to say this; you don’t have to commit to one or the other. As a matter of fact, I don’t, take a look behind me I have a lot of both styles. I chose not to commit to either electric or acoustic. I even have a flamenco style over here; I’m holding acoustic dreadnought. I’ve got a bass. I play a Taylor 8 14; these are both electrics. So even if I move the camera you can even see in the corner I have a three quarter size, that red guitar, that’s for my son and that’s good for kids. So there are all these different options. If you are a committed guitar player eventually you should have both an acoustic and an electric and even a nylon string; it’s good to have a couple, but if you’re just starting out and you just want to get one I suggest you get the electric unless you’re just absolutely not into electric guitar music. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

See, that’s another major question I ask potential students, what kind of music do you like? So if you tell me that you like rock or pop then you should probably be playing an electric guitar because within a few months you’re going to be wanting to play those songs as soon as you get good enough, but if you get an acoustic or even worse if you get a nylon string guitar like what’s behind me right there, it’s called a classical guitar, but you don’t play classical but you get it because the salesman says that the strings are really easy to push. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. The sales man’s happy, he made the sale, but now you’re stuck for life with this guitar that was designed to play Mozart and Bach and Beethoven or flamenco or Brazilian jazz, but not Green Day or Metallica or Jimmy Hendrix or Stephen Ray Vaughn or whatever you’re into or Taylor Swift. It’s not conducive to what you’re currently doing, so what I suggest you do if you’re really torn is take a look at the top 5 favorite guitar players and see what kind of guitar they dominantly play, is it acoustic or electric? That’s a major question. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So if you mostly listen to acoustic players like Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews or oldies like Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor or in the pop culture like Taylor Swift; those are all acoustic, you can do acoustic and do great with that stuff. You can also do that stuff with an electric. And/or if you’re listening to mostly 70s rock, 60s rock, 90s rock — any kind of rock, 2016 rock, blues, funk, reggae, R&B, punk, jazz a lot of the stuff is played and electric so that should help you make up your mind. Be realistic, try to bet on the long term and try to imagine yourself playing guitar if you’re really going to be a player for the rest of your life or for several years until you exhaust this pursuit. You’re going to want a guitar that is going to facilitate and allow for you to play the kind of music that you are into. So don’t get a guitar just because the sales man says get it and there is no other reason than that; do your due diligence, figure it out, feel free to send me an email or give me a call and we can talk about it a little. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Next question, I get asked this a lot on the phone from a lot of perspective students, “how long till I get good at guitar?” That is such a hard question for me to answer. First of all, I don’t know what your definition of good is; I mean your definition of good and my definition of good may be completely different. I mean, I’ve been playing 8 hours a day for 31 years and it took me a while to get good. I don’t know how you define good. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. The way I define good — I’m like a perfectionist so I define good to be like amazing, but you could be good but just playing Sweet home Alabama at the barbecue. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So it depends how you define good, it’s hard for me to answer that question for you, but at the same time imagine, let’s say you work at the gym and there’s a person that is out of shape that calls the gym and say, “how long till I get it? How many workouts does it take till I get fit?” Or “how many personal training sessions till I’m good or till I’m attractive?” And this is over the phone; there is just no way to tell, like, how much do you weigh? What’s your body fat ratio? What’s your sleeping patterns and eating patterns? What’s your natural propensity of your disposition of how your body is? How often are you going to work out? How diligent are you going to be? What’s your water intake? What’s your diet like? What’s your eating habit? It’s really hard to tell all this over the phone and sell you a gym membership. So the same way people call me up on the phone and say, “how long til I get good?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I haven’t even met you.” That’s a good question, it’s a valid question. I understand a lot of people want to know that but after a month of lessons I can answer that question for you a lot better because I’ll understand what you’re learning curve is, how fast you learn, how fast you digest material, how much time you want to put into your practicing, how many lessons a month you want to take to actually help you along with decisive coaching and how much work you are willing to put in to it on a daily basis. And if I know all that stuff then I can say, okay at the current trajectory now established I can guesstimate that it will take you two months to be able to play that song, but it’s very hard or impossible to give you that over the phone. A lot of people asked me that, it’s often like their first question but to be fair to you, I want you to know that that’s just impossible. If someone were to promise you something like that like you’d be amazing in 30 days or whatever without even meeting you or knowing how fast you learn or what your predisposition is in terms of your learning abilities, your musical abilities, you’re available free time, even your age; all these things come into play — they are just probably trying to sell you something real quick and not actually take the time to walk you through the process of getting good, which is exactly what I do. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

So moving on, if you have any questions or comments about this feel free to comment; I do read all the comments and respond to them or you could send me an email at dyce@dycekimura.com. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Next question; how many lessons should I take a week or per month? Let me answer this with a blanket answer; I would say for most people one lesson, one hour, once a week is great. If you can give me one hour a week of coming in for your lesson and I’ll give you enough homework and stimulation for the other 6 days of the week then that’s a good schedule to get on. I do suggest you have consistent lessons, weekly lessons on a consistent day of the week at a consistent time. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Of course, not everyone can do that. I used to have consistent lessons when I was a kid growing up because my life was very structured as a child. When I became an adult, when I became a professional — I can understand how hard it is for people to do that. Some of my clients are emergency room doctors, I’ve got some people that are in and out of town constantly, nurses, lawyers, people that sometimes they have very incredibly demanding schedules and yet they want to play guitar. So I’m very flexible. I just say come and go as you please I don’t put any restrictions on you in terms of how many lessons to take a month. I don’t penalize you if you don’t take a certain amount of lessons per month or per week. But if you’re curious on my input, I would suggest the best plan of action, if you can, is to commit for one lesson a week for one hour. Even if you didn’t practice that much of that week it’s good to just commit because you start to get ingrained and yoked into this rhythm of accountability; you’re meeting with your teacher, you’re meeting with mentor, you’re meeting with your coach, you’re checking and reassessing what your goals are because it’s really easy to take on something as complex as learning music or playing guitar and it feels like you’re just kind of swimming out in the ocean without a life boat or a paddle and it can be huge, because… Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Nowadays, if you go on Google you can Google — there are so many things coming at you at the speed of light on the internet that is, like, so confusing. I’ll get into more of that later in the talk, but I encounter a lot of people that have some serious whiplash from Google and stuff and they want me to explain it all to them and I’m going to attempt to take a crack at that as well. So to answer your question, I think you should do one lesson once a week, however, the better answer is to try to learn to just commit to playing guitar whether it’s with a teacher or without a teacher, whether you can play every day or you can’t play every day, whether you can play every week or you can’t play every week you just commit to it and you try to build your life into it to do the things you’re passionate about. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. It’s great if you’re a perfectionist, because you want to work hard and get it perfect; however, perfectionist are also at the greatest disposition to actually burn out and quit because it has to be at a certain pace, it has to be a certain way or nothing at all and that’s not a good habit to have. I’ll give you an example, I’m like that with the gym; I have a gym membership and I just go when I can. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. I used to be very structured and it has to be this and today we’re doing this body part and tomorrow we’re doing that; I just can’t do that anymore. I’m so busy with all of my responsibilities and work that I just go when I can and I’m contempt with that and at the same time I’m not trying to be competing in the next triathlon or anything I’m just trying to stay fit. So in the same way if you just want to start building guitar in your life, you’re not trying to be a professional you just want to have something enjoyable to do then just try to do it when you can; book a lesson when you can take a lesson and if you can’t, don’t do it, and practice when you can on the days or weeks that you can — it’s okay if you don’t. Ideally, if as an absolute beginner you can practice two or three times a week you’re probably doing pretty good. I know that sounds terrible because you should be practicing every single day, at least that’s what they told me as a kid, but I’m also realistic as a guitar teacher. I’ve taught thousands of people over the years and I just realized that it takes honestly, like, two months — there is just like a learning curve of, like, two months to actually build something into your life. Keep in mind, let’s say somebody gives you a guitar — let’s say your parents give you a guitar or your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend gives you a guitar and say, “here, I want to give you a gift of music. I want to give you a guitar.” They are not giving you the gift of music; they are giving you a guitar and that’s like me giving you a gym membership saying I’m going to give you a gift of fitness. You didn’t give me the gift of fitness you gave me a gym membership. Now I have to go to the gym every day, I have to get in my gym clothes and drive to the gym, and fight traffic and park and check in and then warm up and then work out and then cool down and stretch and leave and get back in my car and then shower and change and drink a protein drink or something and get ready for my life. I mean, there is so much more on a daily grind than just giving me a gym membership. In the same way, just because you buy a guitar or someone gives you a guitar they’re not giving you guitar playing, they’re not giving you music you have to get out and earn it on your own and this is something that through this talk it’s something that I’m helping to maybe permeate and actualize in your mind, but you’re still going to take a few months to actually walking this out to see what this looks like for you. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. If you want to start to learn to play guitar it’s going to take a few months of just trying every day to make time for it and sometimes succeeding, sometimes not succeeding but just continually trying without getting down on yourself or being too much of a perfectionist or being an all or nothing mentality to actually build in your life. What you’re trying to do is build it into your life. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

The better you get at guitar — and I’m going to fast-forward now for several years, so stay with me for a second; but the better you get at guitar, the more you have activities populating in your calendar that have to do with guitar. For instance, as a beginner you may have an appointment with your guitar teacher once a week and that’s the only activity you have populating your calendar. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. As you progress maybe you have some concerts that you’re going to every month or whatever or every other month you are just checking out some artists that you’re into and that’s also invigorating your passion for playing the guitar. As you get better you may have a friend that you can check in with once a week or once a month and play some tunes together and then you guys go home and agree to work on those song, so that’s another event populating your calendar. Maybe one day – this is fast-forward for a few years- but maybe one day you join a band or the band joins you and you start having a consistent rehearsal dates on your calendar even the date that you’re going to be playing at the Shindig in or perform at the open mic or the barbecue or whatever. So now there are all these dates that has to do with music that are populating your calendar, Obviously, the more dates you have populating your calendar the more mindful you’re going to be of music and the more and more it becomes built in your life. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

So the thing with music is a hard thing that people find is getting it built in. By the way, the easiest thing is to buy the guitar. Now, some of you may, “are you kidding, do you know how much a guitar cost?” Yes I do, I have a bunch of them. You can get a beginner level acoustic $150, you can get a beginner level electric for about $130 at least for what I suggest, there are cheaper ones, but that’s the minimum I suggest. But that’s the easy part digging up $100, $200 for guitar is easy compared to the daily grind of building it in your life; that’s the real challenge because it’s uncharted territory you’ve never done it before, you’ve no idea what it’s going to look like, it’s wild and unrehearsed and it’s fun. Remember, this is what you wanted; you wanted to learn how to express yourself musically or be part of it so you have to allow that to build in. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

So how many lessons a week do I take a month? Really just do what you can; you can have good days and bad days, you can have good weeks and bad weeks, you can have good months and bad months. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Listen, I’ve been playing for 31 years and I’ve had bad years; I’ve had great years too, but I just commit to playing I don’t really change course just because I’m up or down I keep doing it. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.  Here is a great blog covering how to use computer technology to improve your guitar playing.

Next question, how many lessons does it take to get good? That’s kind of similar to the second question, which is how long til I get good? But this time it’s a little more specific, how many lessons does it take to get good? Somebody asking me that is a little bit more direct in terms of what they’re trying to ask me. I am going to define good for you, let’s say good is that you can play one song, and I’m talking about a real song like a top 40 song, like a song that you know and you can sing to and it’s cool; I’m not talking about Mary had a little lamb or Twinkle Twinkle little star. So how long does it take to get good to do a basic song like… Maybe you know that, it’s the Dylan tune. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. But something simple like that, 3 chords just to play and to be able to play it; not just play it like I did for you now, but play it with the song. If you practice every day, if you do weekly lessons and if you are relatively normal – if it takes a little longer don’t get discouraged, I’m really hesitant to put a timer on this thing – but I’m saying about 5 weeks to 7 weeks, let’s play it safe, you should be able to do what I just did. If you are an absolute beginner, you practice every single day for at least 30 minutes a day and you’re doing weekly lessons and you tried — that is a normal goal. Some people are way faster than that; some people can do that in a second lesson. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Other people, I’ve seen them take months just to do that, but it doesn’t matter how slow you go because the physical dexterity aspect of playing guitar eventually when you overcome that and it may take a year, it may take 5 years to just learn how to move your chords and stuff after that it’s all in the mind, so a lot of people don’t realize that. It’s just like if it took you a little bit longer than everyone else to learn how to talk. Some people learn how to talk when they’re two; other people learn to talk when they’re four and that could feel like a big deal to you if you are four and you’re the only one who can’t talk; but in the grand scheme of thing it’s not a big deal, by 10 everyone is yapping away. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. So if it takes you little longer to learn some chords or to get your fingers to work that’s really not the end of the world it’s only the beginning so don’t judge yourself by that process. And like I said, anything you can do to make it easier you should do, you should get an electric it’s going to be easier. These things are going to be easier for you like the physical act of playing. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

You’re going to ask me, what else is there other than physical playing? Well, mentally comprehending music is harder than physically playing it, believe it or not. So I’m going to move on. If you have any questions leave a comment and I’ll be happy to answer. Should I do half hour lessons, hour lesson, 90 minute lessons or two hour lessons? Well, like I said I usually tell people one hour once a week is good. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. As a teacher that’s usually all a usually offer people unless you’re really advanced then you can do more, but doing more just to sit in front of the teacher doesn’t necessarily — isn’t always good. For instance, as an absolute beginner to book a two hour session if you’re really slow learner it’s different, if you are really slow learner and you’re able to acknowledge that and work around that and say, “hey I need two hours or 90 minutes” that’s different but booking two hours at a time as a beginner — even advanced I mean, you don’t need that much time in my opinion. Should you do twice a week? If you’re practicing warrant that. It also depends on what your personality is, like, do you need to check in more with your teacher to be okay or can you have some degree of self-propulsion for that if you do one lesson a week for the remainder six-day to be accountable to your own schedule or your own calendar and if you can’t then come see me every 3 days, I’m fine with that. Or, obviously if you have a specific project that you’re working on like a recording or a performance and you are really under the gun, you know, I have people book every day for that; but in general for beginners remember it could be overkill. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Conversely, 30 minutes; 30 minutes is okay doesn’t really give me enough time I feel to, you know, you come in, you sit down, you tune up you get situated 5 minutes is already gone. We can hit it as fast as we can but it’s like a few minutes even to situated, get your homework out, get your guitar tuned up, get ready to go, say hello and do some basic greetings, login, check your email history see what you’re working on and then assess the situation have your practice — that takes some time. I have had some students that have been super eager to just get something out of the lesson so much so that they don’t allow for the teacher to fully explore where they are at, they are like ready for more and it’s like, “well, can I see what you’re working on?” There’ll do it reluctantly, but I just want to address that they are not bad or mean it’s just that they are so eager to get the next thing that they don’t allow themselves to be seen fully by their teacher. So if you’re going to go get a lesson, let your teacher check out your playing for like a good 10 minutes let me see what you did to really make an informed decision of how he or she can help you and what the next step is for you. That’s a very crucial 10 minutes even though you may not be getting anything new for 10 whole minutes, in the mind of the teacher it’s a very important 10 minutes and you need to allow that process to work. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

How do I get good at rhythm? I stuck that question in there not a lot of people ask that, but I stuck it in for this and the reason I did it is because most beginners and intermediate students are bad at rhythm. Rhythm is the hardest thing to learn and it’s the hardest thing to teach on the beginner level, because it’s abstract you can’t wrap your hand around it it’s not physically tangible, but it’s something that’s there. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Music is a language and learning to get good at rhythm is speaking the flow and the jargon of musical Ebonics and it’s not in the thesaurus and you’ve got to learn and it’s not easy there is a technical aspect to rhythm’s in terms of increments of quarter notes or 8th notes or 16th notes; there is a physical aspect of rhythm in terms of let’s say flap taking, alternate picking, alternate strumming, down up, down down, up up and then there is the mathematical aspect to rhythm which is the implementation of what you do and to set up a four bar groove. So how do you get good at rhythm? Well, listen to your teacher. Most students are bad at rhythm. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Most students are bad at rhythm, but they don’t know they are bad at rhythm and the reason you know this is you say, “well, play me a song.” They say okay we’ll play it and I said, “no play your guitar to the song.” Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons. And they can’t play to the song. They can play the song on their own terms, but they can’t sync and play to the song. This is very dangerous — at first this is inevitable and this is how you start learning, but long term if you just do that and you don’t play to songs but you only can play songs on your own, what it means is you don’t know how to play nicely with all the other kids in the sandbox. You cannot play in a band, you can’t play in an ensemble, in a duet, in a duo, you can’t play the music, you’re the sound of one hand clapping, you really can’t do anymore and the reason you won’t get as good as you could if you play to music is when you’re playing to music all those ideas that you’re playing to in the music are coming back and stimulating you. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. So for instance, if I want to learn Russian and I hang out with like 5 or 6 Russians and they just speak Russian if they are not like teaching me they’re just living life and speaking Russian I’m going to learn their mannerism and colloquialism and how they jive and how they joke and how they flow, I’m going to learn their sarcasm and their sitar, I’m going to learn all of that just by being in elements. But if I go to learn Russian and I’m just using my Rosetta Stone software and I’m taking the test and I’m getting 100% and I think I’m getting A+ on everything and I think I’m amazing. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So I book my trip to go on a vacation. I go to Moscow and I start busting out my Russian at the airport and I’m like, “where’s the bathroom?” And I don’t really understand what people are saying they’re just rattling off so fast in Ebonics and maybe like a crazy American I’m not even going to talk to you or maybe they have dialects that I’m not used to, so the quickest way to learn Russian is in Russia. If you can’t afford to go to Russia then go find some Russian people. The quickest way to get good at playing guitar is to play with other musicians — speak their language. And the thing is it’s not always going to be on your terms, as a beginner if you’re in guitar lessons the whole hour is about you, it’s all about you, it’s all about — is your guitar tune? How did you do? How are you feeling with all these chords? Let’s play these chords and see if I can play them with you? Go ahead and start and I’ll play them with you. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons. And it’s should be that way but it’s all about you; but at some point if you get good you have to be able to say, “okay it’s not going to be about me it’s going to be about the song, so I’m going to get together with these other people and we’re going to play the song.” And that’s like going to Russia, I could go on and on with analogies; but if you’re going to play the guitar, you have to make the transition into playing music you’ve got to play music to music with music so eventually you can play music with people and you can play for people. See music is meant to be playing with people and it’s meant to be playing for people and ironically music in it’s lyrical content is about people. Music is about people playing with people playing for people, it’s all about people, so the more you can get people involved in your playing the better you’re going to get and the more you’re going to understand the big picture but you’re going to really shun everyone out if you don’t understand the fundamentals of rhythm. So I use a lot of different tactics and techniques to teach rhythms including drumbeats and machines and I slow songs down. I actually just did a video on my channel if you take one or two videos back I just did a video last week on how I use music tech with the way I teach. And in that video I cover some of those principles about what kind of technology I can use for rhythms, which by the way nobody’s (I’m going to go into a little rabbit trap here) nowadays it’s so much easier to learn this stuff than even 10 years ago. Listen, I learned to play guitars in the 80s. Whenever you wanted to tune your guitar I had to find a piano or like a tuning fork or like a pitch pipe; nowadays you just clip on this $11 tuners and you’re done — it’s crazy. And so guitar playing has erratically changed since I learned to play and it’s been great and I teach now ultramodern current techniques which make it so much easier to play rhythms and understand chord sequences. Back in the day you just had to be so stubborn about wanting to get good at guitar until you’re finally good, which is how I came up, the school of hard knocks, but nowadays there’s a lot of other tools. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Miami Guitar Lessons Advice

So one of those tools is there are software that actually tell you what the chord is while you’re playing and there are other software that can slow down the song. So you can slow the song down so that you can participate. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So not only can you get a teacher that will teach you how to play it – and then you can change the key and do stuff to change the chords to fit into the chordal vocabulary that you currently have, believe it or not. Some of you may not understand what I’m saying, but believe me when I tell you there’s a lot of new ways to learn to play guitar they make it very very applicable. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Just like there is a lot of new ways to learn Russian; by the way, I’m not learning Russian, but if I wanted to you know what I would do on top of getting software and renting Russian movies and listening to Russian music and get tutorial software and stuff I would probably book a Skype call to a Russian/English teacher in Moscow, St. Petersburg. It’s probably cheaper in St. Petersburg because their standard of living is lower. It’s so easy now to interact with Russians. Imagine the same with music. I’m available on Skype. I’ve got students that contact me from Argentina and Colombia, Brazil, China and they want to learn from the American rock and pro and they are booking me and hiring me on Skype and how cool is that? It’s cool for me but it’s so cool for them; for me it’s something to do from the office, but they are interacting with somebody from the other side of the world where this music is created and performed and written. I think it’s really cool, that’s one use of technology. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

How often do I need to tune my guitar? A lot of people are surprised that I tune the guitar every time I go to play it, they are just shocked. But why do I do that? Because it needs tuning. Playing the guitar, just the simple act of playing, just the friction from hitting the strings and moving your fingers around and just the strings even heating up from the friction and the movement of vibration, the heating up causing the strings to expand and all the movement and the vibration and the resonating that is going to my guitar out of tune, just that, believe it or not. On top of that, the temperature; I’m living in Miami and we’re in September and it says here that it’s 76° in my office and it’s easily 95° out there. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. So if you had your guitar in the car for like 30 minutes to an hour your guitar went from the AC at your house like 72 to 76 — let’s say it’s like 74° in your house so your strings are set at 74° and then you put it in the car in your trunk and all of a sudden it’s like 120° in the trunk and you do a 30 minute drive and you get here and you pull it out and it hits that 74° air again, what’s going to happen? Well, your strings were in tuned in your apartment or house and it was 74° they expanded – and the whole wood and everything expanded by the way when it hit the 120° in your trunk and then it shrunk back real quick again when you chilled it at 74°/ You think it’s going to shrink back and go exactly the same place it was before it expanded? Of course not and on top of that, how do you put your guitar up when you’re done playing with it? Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Do you put it like this and do you lean it against the wall like this? Well these tuners are going to get moved ever so incrementally and that’s enough to knock you out of tune. Or do you put it on the stand or maybe you can slide it face down under your bed on top of a towel. A lot of people don’t want to put a guitar faced down they feel like it’s sacrilegious, but if you don’t have a guitar stand or a guitar case put it on top of the towel face down under your bed is probably the safest way to keep it protected, secure, out of the way and in tuned. Putting it face up you’re still resting the weight on the tuner, so if you put it face down there is no weight on the tuner. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

And then the other question is do you have pets or kids that’s going to knock your guitar around or kids that are going to come and wind your whiner? Obviously you’re going to need a tuner if that’s the case. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. There’s a lot of cool ways of tuning; actually, I just recently did a video on a Snark review and in the video I teach you how to tune.  So if you want to learn how to tune you could check that video. Feel free to subscribe I do a lot of cool videos for up and comers so a lot of free information here folks. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

How many times a week should I practice? Well, like I said earlier ideally if you can do twice a week as a beginner I think that’s realistic, but he should try to practice every day. As you improve it really depends — if you’re in lessons and you’re doing it twice a week I think that’s the minimum. The minimum for what? The minimum to validate the experience in paying for the lessons you’ve got to do something. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. On top of that it’s really about how good you want to get obviously the more you practice the more you going to get. At first though, for your first 2 or 3 weeks you should practice — you don’t want to practice so much that your skin is ripping off your blisters, so be careful with that. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. Don’t practice so much as an absolute beginner that your skin rips off your blisters, but aside from that you should be able to push through once you get some calluses going you should just practice. You could practice 10 minutes at a time 3 times a day, you could practice for 20 minutes twice a day, you could practice 30 minutes to an hour once a day whatever works for you whatever you can do. Like I said earlier it’s not the end of the world if you don’t practice every day; but try, try to do what you can. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

And I have another question here, how long should I practice every day? I kind of just answered it just now. Here’s a cool one, I just got asked this the other day. I had a guy come in and he’s a martial arts instructor and he wants to take guitar. So he is like, “I’ve got no experience. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m here to learn.” I said, great, let’s just learn.” And he says, “oh by the way, here’s the song.” and he gives me this song and he’s like, “I want to play the song for my wife in 3 weeks.” And I said, “okay.” I was like how do I address this? Because it was a pretty basic sound, but it’s still complex interms of rhythms and cadence and structure and the verse is different from the chorus which is different from the pre-chorus which is different from the intro which is different from the guitar solo. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. You get the idea, there is changes coming at you at light speed and as an absolute beginner and I’m like okay. So I said to him, “ so you teach martial arts?” He’s like, “yeah” and I said “okay, imagine I go to your school and I say hey I want to take martial arts lessons and I’m an absolute beginner.” “Okay great here’s where you sign up no problem,” and then I would’ve say to you right after that, “hey I just booked a fight with like the local state champion in 3 weeks so you’ve got to make me win. Of course I’ll be telling everyone that I’m taking martial arts lessons from your school so that’s all be representative and then it’s kind of like not realistic. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So don’t set yourself up for failure right away; you’ve got to just go into this thing with an open mind and just be willing to work. You get exactly what you put into it that’s 100% true, but don’t have unrealistic expectations like you’re going to get good at guitar without practicing or you don’t even have a guitar and you expect to be able to practice or be good without even owning one or in 3 weeks you’re going to be able to play your favorite song to your wife. Now, you may be able to play a cool song that’s really nice that I can assign you that is or was a top 40 hit in 3 weeks, you may be able to do that, but don’t bet on the song that you chose for yourself to be the easiest song with the easiest chord changes for yourself; just try to have an open mind. I’m not saying it can’t be done; I’m just saying try to have an open mind. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Dyce Kimura Miami Guitar Teacher

Here is something for more advanced students, intermediate students and they say — here’s a common question I get… they’re on Google every night, they’re googling how to get better at guitar, how to get good at and Google says they found a website where they found a guy that says, “hey you really need to do this or if you’re going to be good you’re going to do that,” and then there’ll say in their lesson, “shouldn’t I be doing this? Shouldn’t I be doing that? Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. I was on Google and the thing talks about there is more concept here like modal playing, cage system, sweet picking,” and I’m like “yeah, but you just learned how to play a minor, you want to modal playing?” And then some people are really smart and they are overachievers and they can always find a shortcut in a situation or scenario which is good, but there is no shortcuts when it comes to really learning true technique. There are definitely things that you do to accelerate the process to go the shortest possible distance between two points but assuming you’re doing that with a good instructor there is no real way of circumventing or shortcutting basics before getting into more advanced topics or techniques. So just because you’re really smart and you’re still learning how to play some basic chords or maybe you are learning how to improvise on some easy pentatonic stuff doesn’t really mean that you’re right away ready for modal playing or sweat picking. So don’t assume — and just because you saw it on Google. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. The guy on Google or the guy on YouTube that told you that he doesn’t know you like I know you, if I’m your teacher I actually know you and I know how fast you’re developing, how you process information, how concepts need to be explained to you in a way that you’re going to understand and when I give you a new concept how many days or weeks it takes you to come back to me with an understanding and the ability to reproduce that concept. I know you if you’re my students, but the guys on Google doesn’t know you. So you Google something and you take it back to your teacher and you say “teach me this,” or even “if you don’t teach me this you’re not going to satisfy my expectations.” Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. It’s not that I can’t physically possibly explain it to you or even do it; its just that you may not be able to retain it within the 60 minutes that we have together or the two months that you’ve been taking lessons and you want to be careful about that. I’m not trying to discourage you from Googling stuff because you should Google stuff and you should learn in all the ways that you can. As a matter of fact, I did a video I referred to earlier about ways of learning guitar on the Internet. There’s so much to learn out there, but just careful about putting that stipulation on your local instructor because you may not be ready for all. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Now that being said if you feel like your instructor is not savvy to the techniques that you want to learn and you’re being held back because of the instructor’s inability to perform those techniques are even comprehend the stuff that you’re looking at then you should definitely ask those difficult questions or maybe even seek out a new instructor that’s absolutely for sure; but if you can find a way of balancing the two sides of this thing find a good instructor and the way you know they’re going to be good is they have good reviews but the best thing you know once you getting face-to-face is if you like the way they play. If they play in a way that you like and it moves you and speaks to you then stick with that person. If you don’t like the way they play and they have a bunch of degrees on the wall and that they make a powerful case of why they’re the best instructor verbally but they can’t actually play in a way that you like then I don’t suggest you learn from that person and that’s true for anything in life, but that’s also true for guitar. So try to balance the two. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. This is a journey, I’ve been learning for 31 years. I’ve been teaching full-time for like 16 years and I didn’t learn it all from just one teacher, I didn’t learn it all form one course or one book or one way of practicing or one band or one genre I just kept going and eventually I learned a lot of different techniques and a lot of different concepts and playing styles. I am a student of the guitar as well as a teacher. I love it. Miami guitar lessons by Dyce Kimura are the best in town. So I would encourage you to adopt a similar mentality be a student of the guitar and commit to playing for life. I am not saying commit to your specific teacher, I’m not saying commit to your style of music you could switch genres, I’m not saying commit to electric or acoustic or nylon are bass, but if you’re committed to learning the guitar no matter what shape or form you will and you will succeed and over 5 years, 10 years, 20 years you’ll have something to show for it which is the goal obviously you’re watching this video because you want to learn how to get good. Dyce Kimura is offering great, affordable Miami guitar lessons.

Feel free to subscribe to my channel I’m giving out lots of free insight, wisdom and covers and inspirational videos of playing and stuff. Dyce Kimura is the best, most experienced teacher offering Miami guitar lessons. Also if you like this video, if you hit like or comment it really helps me out and it also it helps the community because the people watching this video they’re all part of the community that want to learn so if you have something to contribute in response to what I’m saying feel free to comment that could help somebody else just like this is helping you. And I will see you in the next video. I appreciate you for watching that.